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Abstract. Traditionally, critical psychologies have drawn on developmental, social or clinicaldata. Thedata of cognitive psychology have fallen outside the usual purview of criticalinterests: in terms of both content and methodology, cognitivism does not appear to be`critical`. Against these tendencies, this paper claims that cognitivism is an important anduseful site for critical work in psychology. This is argued through an examination of therelation of cognition to affect. With reference to mainstream psychological theories andmodels and to Silvan Tomkins` innovative yet hitherto critically under-utilised theories ofaffect it is argued that the nature of cognition is not dissociable from the influence ofaffect or `hot` cognition. The notion that cognitive processing is always cold and affectlessis not supportable as either a conventional or critical axiom. Under the influence ofTomkins` model of `co-assembled` cognitions and affects a return to cognitivism as agenerative foundation for critical psychology is advocated.

Keywords: cognition, affect, Tomkins, critical psychology

Computer simulation has attracted and will continue to attract strangebedfellows-

psychoanalysts, Pavlovians, psychometricians, clinicalpsychologists, philosophers, engineers, mathematicians. One should forgetneither that they are strange nor that they are bedfellows. (Tomkins,1963b, p. 7)

Critical psychology has had little appetite for the theories and methodologies ofcognitive psychology. Most often the psychologies that name themselves `critical`draw on developmental, social or clinical data. Moreover, what makes thesepsychologies `critical` is their interest in social and cultural theories, their concernfor the `real-world` (as opposed to laboratory-confined) dimensions ofpsychology, or their commitment to an explicitly politicised agenda (feminist, anti-racist, anti-psychiatric, anti-homophobic). Along with a number of other sub-fieldsin mainstream psychology (e.g., perception, neuropsychology), cognitivepsychology has fallen-

quite naturally it would seem-

outside this array of criticalinterests. In terms of both content and methodology, cognitivism does not appearto be intelligibly or usefully `critical`. Afterall, what use is a theory of patternrecognition to an anti-homophobic agenda? Are not computational models ofmemory too dissociated from thelived and embodied workings of everydaymemory? More seriously, hasn`t cognitivism become the very foundation of themainstream psychology from which acritical

psychology seeks to distance itself?

Sustained commentary on cognitivism has been forsaken in critical psychology infavour of a routine dismissal of cognitive theories and methodologies. In the placeof extended commentary we find short and brutal assessments. Henriques,Elizabeth A. Wilson

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Hollway, Urwin, Venn and Walkerdine (1989) in their landmark critique oftraditional psychology are unequivocal: `Our critique indicates what traps must beavoided in an alternative approach: cognitivism` (p. 24). In an analysis of thepolitics of cognitive psychology Bowers (1990) damns cognitivism for its militaristicassociations: `Cognitivism, like all technoscience, is part of the late twentiethcentury`s war machine and should be studied as such` (p. 140). Decrying theinfluence of cognitive theory in social psychology, Hollway (1989) is clear aboutthe political limitations

of cognitivism: `The trouble with cognitive and socio-cognitive theory is that they inherit a cluster of fundamental and limitingassumptions from psychology, none of which will serve as the basis of anemancipatory theory of gender` (p. 102). Squire (1995) concurs with Hollwayabout the aridity of cognitivism for feminist and discursive analysis in psychology:`Feminist psychologists share discourse analysts` dissatisfaction with cognitivism`(p. 147). Still and Costall`s (1991) edited collection on critical approaches tocognitive psychology is a notable exception to this tendency to dismiss cognitivismwithout detailed interrogation; nonetheless both cognitive psychology andcognitivism remain `the problem` (p. 5) against which the alternative theories and

methodologies of this anthology are mobilised. What underlies the criticalauthority of these various dismissals is a set of shared axioms concerningcognitivism: cognitivism is predicated on `[a] deeply ideological individualism` and`a mechanistic conception of mind` (Parker, 1992, p. 91). For many criticalpsychologies cognitivism is necessarily individualistic and reductive; and therejection of cognitivism is thesine qua non

of a critical (i.e., anti-individualist, anti-reductive) approach to the discipline.

Whether it has been through an explicit dismissal or through a pointedindifference, cognitivism has been thwarted as a `critical`, `cultural`, or`political` endeavour. Computer simulations, models of information processingand neurocognitive

architectures are near-universally deemed pre-critical orperhaps even anti-critical interests. Despite the differences in the logic of theseaccusations (`pre-critical`, `anti-critical`, `non-critical`), their effect is the same-

to position cognitivism

as the object of critical inquiry but never as its ally. Thisdistaste has been maintained in defiance of the huge theoretical andmethodological influence of cognitivism across most sub-fields in psychology sincethe 1960s. What price is paid politically

and critically by disregarding (or at least,by regarding but only in order to disregard) cognitive theories, models andmethodologies? Can critical psychology claim to be usefully engaged with itsdiscipline when this foundational influence has been so spectacularly ignored? Inthis paper I would like to point to some of the ways in which the critical potentialof cognitive psychology could be exploited. It is my contention that cognitivepsychology is more usefully critical than the current rejections of

it suggest.

Excavating the critical possibilities of cognitive psychology requires a two-sidedapproach: it demands not simply a reassessment of the nature of cognition, butalso a reassessment of the critical and political foundations of critical psychologyitself. If it is clear that there has been no natural affinity between the cognitiveand the critical, it is less clear what the reasons for this are. In the first instance itElizabeth A. Wilson

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may appear that it is cognitive psychology itself that must carry the burden of thisdisassociation-

afterall, it would be argued, computational modeling anddecontextualised experimentation are the hallmarks of a restrictive domain thateschews criticism and politics. However, there is another force at work that is noless important in maintaining this detachment of the cognitive from the critical. Myconcern (argued at length elsewhere, Wilson, 1998) is that the political techniquesof critical psychology (that is, the interpretive and empirical methodologiesfashioned by feminism, anti-psychiatry, anti-racism, radical psychology, Marxism,Foucauldianism, psychoanalysis, deconstruction or queer theory) are built on anti-biological, anti-essentialist and anti-scientific foundations that have become asnarrow and reductive as the cognitivist foundations they aim to contest. Theshared, intuitive anti-cognitivism of these methodologies restricts the kinds ofprojects that are undertaken and ultimately limits the purchase of criticism withinthe discipline. My intent is not simply

to make cognitivism and criticism bedfellows-

to push together two unlikely but potentially compatible partners. More than this,I am interested in thestrangeness

of this liaison-

in the sense of both itspeculiarity and its unfamiliarity. How does this juxtaposition (critical/cognition)reveal the unfamiliar productivities and unforeseen potential of cognitivism at thesame time as it reveals the peculiar refusals and foreclosures of criticism? Againstall of our critical and political intuitions, is it possible that cognitivism could be atheoretical and methodological foundation for critical psychology?

My particular interest in this paper is in the relation of cognition to affect. Much ofwhat makes cognitivism seemingly amenable to the labels `pre-critical` or `anti-critical` is that cognition is seen (by traditional and critical psychologies alike) tobe divorced from the affective and embodied nature of psychology. Arguingagainst this assessment of the dissociated nature of cognition, I will suggest that(1) there has been a persistent and necessary relation between cognition andaffect and that (2) such a relation is one of the routes through which the criticalpotential of cognitivism could be deployed. I have left the terms `affect` and`emotion` loosely defined in this paper, and often I use them interchangeably.Tomkins` (1962, 1963a, 1991, 1992) theory of affect is the main influence on myusage of these terms, however the affects per se are not the analytic concern ofthis paper. Rather it

is the prevailing prejudice that the ontologies of cognitivismare necessarily sterile or restrictive that occupies me here. My primary goal is toshow how cognition is founded in a disseminated and generative affiliation withaffect.

Hot cognition

There seems to have been no provision in the computer game for the studyof cognition dealing with affect-laden objects-

Robert Abelson`s concern about the preference given to cold cognition over hotcognition comes very early in the `cognitive revolution` that has captivatedElizabeth A. Wilson

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mainstream methodologies and theories in psychology. Abelson notes that therewas a tendency in early cognitive psychology to study primarily the `cold`processes of problem solving, concept formation and pattern recognition. Howeverit is also the case that from the very beginning this mainstream cognitivism neveroperated entirely outside the heated influence of theories of affect. The work ofSilvan Tomkins and colleagues such as Abelson (Tomkins, 1962, 1963a; Tomkinsand Messick, 1963; Tomkins and Izard, 1965) testifies to the sustained empiricaland theoretical interest in the relation between cognition and affect even as thevery notion of cognition was being defined and operationalised. In the early 1960sthese psychologists were interested in a variety of projects that interrogated therelation of cognition to affect, in particular they had an interest in the computersimulation of personality and affect. To be sure, the origins of cognitivism inpsychology can be traced through the traditional genealogies of informationtheory, computer simulation, AI and logico-mathematical modelling (Boden, 1989;Gardner, 1985), but cognition has also been given shape through the study ofemotion and personality. This latter genealogy ties cognitivism in psychology moreclosely to the affectively based critiques of psychoanalysis and anti-psychiatry thanis usually supposed. In the period after the emergence of the first post-behaviourist cognitive models and theories but before cognitive psychologybecame definable as a particular mode of information-processing (see Neisser,1967 and Lindsay and Norman, 1972 for two texts that were influential in definingmainstream cognitive psychology) a number of other orientations towards thecognitive blossomed in psychology. An interrogation of these research projectswould be one point of entry into a critical reassessment of cognitivism.

It need not be assumed that the concerns of this early research simply vanished,that they failed to exert any influence on definitions of cognition, that theyoccupied a merely ancillary role in the development of the field, or that they aretoo empirically or theoretically dated to have any purchase in contemporarycognitive psychology (see Sedgwick and Frank, 1995 for an invigorating account ofthe utility of Tomkins` work for contemporary critical debates). The debate inmainstream psychology in the early 1980s between Zajonc and Lazarus (Zajonc,1980, 1984; Lazarus, 1982, 1984) over the relation between cognition and affectis a case in point. Zajonc (1980) contests the commonly held notion that affect is`postcognitive`, that affect `is elicited only after considerableprocessing ofinformation has been accomplished` (p. 151). This view would contend thatanger, joy, shame or guilt can arise only after certain basic cognitive processes(e.g., feature recognition) have been executed. Zajonc argues (with reference toAbelson, Tomkins and Izard) that affective reactions need not depend on suchcognitive processing and that indeed affective reactions are primary or pre-cognitive; `it is entirely possible that the very first stage of the organism`sreaction to stimuli and thevery first element of retrieval are affective` (p. 154).Against the models that `relegate affect to a secondary role mediated anddominated by cognition` (p. 170), Zajonc suggests that the affective systems arefunctionally and perhaps even biologically independent of cognitive processing.

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In his critique of Zajonc`s position, Lazarus (1982) argued that `cognitive activityis anecessary

as well as sufficient condition of emotion` (p. 1019). Lazarusrejected all the central claims of Zajonc`s position; he preserved the primacy ofcognition over affect (`cognitive appraisal . . . underlies and is an integral featureof all emotional states` p. 1021) and he rejected the idea that cognition and affectare separate psycho-physiological systems (`cognition and

emotion are usuallyfused in nature` p. 1019). For Lazarus, Zajonc`s position is too dependent on theindividualism of traditional cognitive models of information processing:`information processing as an exclusive model of cognition is insufficientlyconcerned with the person as a source of meaning` (p. 1020). Moreover, byseparating affect and cognition, Zajonc seemed to be implying that cognition isalways rational, conscious and deliberate while affect is primitive and involuntary.As a way of averting

this bifurcation, Lazarus makes a case for the non-consciousand non-rational character of some cognitive processing.

The Zajonc/Lazarus debate may seem to pivot on a rather simple argument aboutprimacy (of affect over cognition, or of cognition over affect) but the details of thedebate touch on a more fundamental issue about the character of cognition.Zajonc is perhaps the more illuminating of the two in this regard. While he wantsto maintain an independence between cognition and affect, Zajonc nonethelessoften figures cognition and affect as inevitably (although not symmetrically)related:

There are probably very few perceptions and cognitions in everyday lifethat do not have a significant affective component, that aren`t hot, or inthe very least tepid. (p. 153)

Affect isalways

present as a companion to thought, whereas the converseis not true for cognition. (p. 154)

Thought and affect stand in tension to each other (p. 155)

While Lazarus claims that cognition and affect are `fused` in nature, the characterof this fusion is figured only vaguely. Zajonc`s arguments more forcefully open upthe possibility of seeing a mutual but non-symmetrical relation between cognitionsand affects that has a constitutive effect on the character of cognition itself. Ifaffect always accompanies thought but thought doesn`t always accompany affect,then the extent to which any cognitive process could be theorised outside theinfluence of a theory of affect is greatly diminished. Or to put this in more starkontological terms-

cognition exists through a relation to affect. To this end,Zajonc`s claim that cognition and affect are separate systems requires closerscrutiny. The nature of their separateness seems to be questioned by theirconstant (and in the case of cognition, necessary) companionship. This point-

for example, seeks to formalise the way in which affects influence thinking(specifically, social judgements): `The AIM assumes that affective states, althoughdistinct from cognitive processes,do interact with and inform cognition andjudgments by influencing the availability of cognitive constructs used in theconstructive processing of information` (p. 41). Drawing on, and reviewing anextensive body of empirical work on affect and cognition,Forgas suggests thataffect differentially `infuses` different kinds of cognitive judgements. Specifically,the more generative and constructive thinking is, the more open it is to theinfluence of affect: `Affect infusion is most likely to occur in the course ofconstructive processing that involves the substantial transformation rather thanmere reproduction of existing cognitive reproductions` (p. 39). Notwithstandingcertain theoretical difficulties (e.g., the formal distinction between affective states

and cognitive processing; the tendency to figure affect as a singular andunmodulated force-

see Sedgwick and Frank, 1995 for an incisive critique of thistendency in cognitive science), the AIM attests to the endurance of affect ininformation processing models over the duration of the so-called `cognitiverevolution` in psychology.

Similarly, the influence of affect has been felt in perhaps the `coldest` jurisdictionof cognitivism: computer simulation (the Affect Infusion Model is positioned within

an information processing framework, but it does not rely on computer simulationper se). In the 1960s Tomkins and his colleagues were interested in the computersimulation of affect and personality, but this kind of research project did notsurvive in the later developments of cognitive psychology and AI. As Picard (1997)notes, AI in particular has focused on tasks of intelligence (problem solving,reasoning, learning, perception, language) as though these processes areindependent of emotion. Nonetheless, the project of simulating affect seems tohave resurfaced as a viable, indeed urgent, research priority. Picard`s ownresearch in the Media Lab at MIT is dedicated to the design of affectivecomputers. The term affective computing covers a wide range of

researchinterests: the design of computers that recognise emotions; the design ofcomputers that express (or mimic) emotions; and the design of computers thathave emotions. The MIT lab(http://vismod.www.media.mit.edu/vismod/demos/affect/) is currentlyworking onprojects such as a `sentic mouse` (`a modified computer mouse that includes asensor device for sensing emotional valence-

liking/attraction vs.disliking/avoidance`), `expression glasses` (`a wearable device which allows anyviewer to visualize the confusion and interest levels of the wearer`) and `affectiveavatars` (`virtual reality avatars which accurately and in real time represent thephysical manifestations of affective state of their users in the real world`). ForPicard, the value of research on affective computing is not simply its ability toproduce computing devices that simulate or recognise affect convincingly, moreforcefully she argues that these artificial affective capacities will greatly improvethe design and function of intelligent machines in general. That is, effectivesimulation of intelligence requires effective simulation of affect. In this respect,Picard draws heavily on Damasio`s (1994) recent neuropsychological hypothesisthat emotion is a necessary condition for rational thinking.

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Like Abelson, Tomkins, Zajonc, Lazarus and Forgas, and no doubt like many othercognitive researchers over the past 40 years, Picard makes a strong argument thatthe operations of cognition cannot be coherently separated from the vicissitudesof the affects. The suspicion that cognitive research has developed in the absenceof concerns about emotion (that cognition is always, absolutely `cold`) cannot besustained by even the most cursory review of the literature. The exact nature ofthe relation of `hot` and `cold` cognitions requires a more fine-tuned analysisthan this. What seems like a more useful hypothesis is that mainstreamcognitivism hasmarginalised

affect, that is has split cognition from the affects andpursued cognition without considering the influence of the affects. This hypothesisseems to be supportable with reference to the mainstream pedagogical literature.Standard undergraduate textbooks on cognitive psychology rarely discussemotion. Recent editions of these texts (e.g., Best, 1995; French and Colman,1995; Kellogg, 1995; Solso, 1998) often fail to even index emotion or affect as atopic of interest to the junior cognitive psychologist. Eysenck and Keane (1995)are a notable exception to this trend-

they dedicate an entire chapter to cognitionand emotion. Eysenck`s dictionary of cognitive psychology (Eysenck, 1991)likewise includes an extended entry on emotion, making this particular volumeunlike other dictionaries or surveys of cognitive psychology which typicallymakeonly passing references to emotion (Solso and Massaro, 1995; Solso, 1997;Stuart-Hamilton, 1996). The new connectionist literature appears similarlyuninterested in questions of emotion and affect. While connectionism delivers animportant critical restructuring of cognitive architectures and theories (Miers,1993; Sutton, 1998; Wilson, 1996b, 1998), the research focus of connectionistpsychology tends to be similar to that already established in traditional cognitivepsychology (e.g., pattern recognition, language production and comprehension)-

emotional networks are not considered in the standard introductory connectionisttexts (Quinlan, 1991; Rumelhart, McClelland and the PDP Research Group, 1986).Churchland (1995) gives a description of a connectionist network (EMPATH) thathas had moderate success at recognising human emotions, but he offers littlecomment about the role of affect in connectionist processing generally. As withmost of this introductory literature, emotion is peripheral to the main concerns ofthe text.

This motif of `marginalisation` underlies many of the critiques of cognitivepsychology, and it authorises recent mainstream research projects which aim torestore affect to the domain of cognitive studies. Eysenck`s (1998) account isperhaps typical in this regard:

Most cognitive psychologists conducting research have chosen to ignorethe issue of the effects of emotions on cognition by attempting to keep theemotional state of their subjects constant . . . As there are almost

constantinteractions

between cognition and emotion in everyday life, any attempt toprovide an adequate theory of cognition that ignores emotion is probablydoomed to failure (p. 435, italics added).

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What is being argued here is that there is a kind of relation (`almost constantinteractions`) between cognitions and affects that a competent cognitivepsychology must take into account. Specifically, a focus on the `interaction` ofaffects and cognitions would enrich a domain that hitherto has been narrow and`cold`. Intuitively appealing as such an approach may be, I would like to suggesta different kind of response. In the first instance, as I have attempted to showabove it is not clear that affect has been `outside` the field of cognition or that ithas been ineffectively marginalised within it. Demands that affect be includedand/or become a more central consideration in cognitive psychology often missthe influence that theories of affect have already had on theories of cognition;indeed, these demands usually repeat the very exclusion or marginalisation theyclaim to be eliminating. This may be a profitable strategy for traditional cognitivepsychologies (it produces a veneer of self-critique and self-improvement thatleaves the axioms of the fieldunchanged), but it is an entirely counterproductiveapproach for critical psychologies. Furthermore, I am not convinced that models ofinteraction adequately address the crucial critical issues about the role of affect incognitive psychology (see Oyama, 1985 for an astute and sustained interrogationof the limits of interactionist models in relation to the question of nature/nurture inpsychology). Interactionist models tend to gloss over the ontological details ofcognitive/affective relations too quickly: does an interaction imply that affects andcognitions are ontologically alike? If not, what then is the nature of an`interaction` between ontologically dissimilar forces? Indeed, is an interactionbetween ontologically disjunct forces even possible?

If it is now widely accepted that emotions influence cognition, that cognitiveprocessing is implicated in the expression of emotions, and that these`interactions` are often highly complex, the implications of this for the verynature of these interacting elements are less clearly articulated. Are cognition andaffect two discrete forces that enter into a complex, yet ontologically benign,relation? Or is their relationality somehow integral to their very nature? Perhapsthe central difficulty for interactionism as a critical response to cognitivepsychology is that it always maintains a fundamental separation between theinteracting elements in the model (Sampson, 1981 makes a similar argument inregards to cognitive psychology but using a different axisof interaction). Whatremains indispensable to any model of a cognition/affect interaction is that, at anymoment, both cognition and affect can be separated and delimited. Interactionistmodels always assume a purely cognitive domain and a purely affective domainthat predate and may indeed outlive the interaction itself. Such an approach iscritically ineffective as it leaves open the possibility of extracting a conventionally`cold` or a radically `hot` cognitive ontology from this interactive hybrid.Interactionism is a coherent mainstream model for exactly this reason-

thetraditional axioms about the nature of cognition as a contained, coherent andautonomous force are fortified (not displaced) by interactionism.

To put this another way-

and to make the deconstructive commitments of thispaper explicit-

I wish to argue that the nature of cognition is always already ofthe nature of affect. Neither a radical distinction nor a radical collapse betweenElizabeth A. Wilson

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cognition and affect reflects the complexity oftheir constitutive interrelation. Nordoes the notion of an interaction-

a secondary event that befalls an alreadydelimited cognition-

encompass the originary structure of interimplication out ofwhich cognition is forged. Cognition cannot be said to pre-exist the relations itenters into; these relations are always already constitutively `entered` andenacted. If cognition`s relation to affect cannot usefully be described as aninteraction, then what kinds of critically efficacious models of the relation betweencognition and affect, and thus of cognition itself, are possible? In the next sectionI will offer some preliminary notes on the cognitive system as conceived by SilvanTomkins. Tomkins` model of cognition is immersed in his theory of affect. Thisimmersion of cognition in affect furnishes Tomkins with a cognitive theory that willnot only startle conventional cognitive models but will also arrest the anti-cognitivism that serves as a foundation for many critical psychologies.

Coassembling cognition

Cognitions coassembled with affects become hot and urgent. Affectscoassembled with cognitions become informed and smarter (Tomkins,1992, p. 7)

It has become a commonplace in critical and feminist discourses to see thedomain of cognitivism as restrictively masculinised, as explicitly disembodiedand/or as fundamentally straight. It is supposed that AI is an attempt to reproducethinking outside the constraints of the maternal body and a social milieu, or thatcognitive psychology`sraison d`être

is to sequester psychology from theembodied reality of everyday life. Inevitably what such suspicions engender is aninflexible analytic doctrine wherein cognition can be rendered politically andcritically useful only by forcing it-

against its nature, it is assumed-

into a relationwith social or cultural influence. Under the logic of such a doctrine, cognition itself-

cognition as it is presumed to exist prior to its perversion by the social-

remainsconventionally narrow. Lest it be thought that I consider this tendency to be theprovidence only of other people`s analyses, I should note here that my ownrecent analysis of Turing and cognitive psychology dutifully replicates many ofthese presumptions: `We can say, then, that cognition is the projection of themasculine desire to be free of the body: while ostensibly an anti-dualistic attemptto mechanize the mind . . . cognition is simply a reinstantiation of the Cartesiandesire for the kernel of man to be pure intellectuality` (Wilson, 1996a, p. 585). Inthis section I would like to show that the nature of cognition is more complexlyconstituted than these kinds of analytic operations suggest. Cognition is not soutterly sterile nor so homogeneously fabricated that we should find ourselvescompelledto refigure, restore or redeem its character; the character of cognitionalready

presents a rich and generative ontological puzzle that hitherto manycritical methodologies have failed to recognise.

In the final volume of his 4 volume treatiseAffect, Imagery, Consciousness,Tomkins (1992) undertakes an analysis of cognition and its place in his alreadypublished theory of affects. One of the central tenets of his theory of affect is thatElizabeth A. Wilson

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the affects (interest, joy, distress, startle, disgust, aggression, fear, shame), notthe drives, are the primary motivators of human behaviour. Arguing against thedominance of drive theory in both behaviourism and psychoanalysis, Tomkins(1962) suggests that while biological drives like hunger or the need for air providecertain motivational information, on their own they are insufficient motivators ofhuman action. Drives have motivational effect only when amplified by the affects:

The drive system is . . . secondary to the affect system. Much of themotivational power of the drive system is borrowed from the affect system,which is ordinarily activated concurrently as an amplifier for the drivesignal. The affect system is, however, capable of masking or even inhibiting

the drive signal and of being activated independently of the drive systemby a broad spectrum of stimuli, learned and unlearned. (Tomkins, 1962, p.22)

The motivational affect-drive system is only one half of Tomkins` `human beingtheory`. The second half is the cognitive system. What concerns Tomkins at thebeginning of the final volume ofAffect, Imagery, Consciousness

on cognition isthe nature of the relation between these two halves. Rather than suggesting asingle axis of interaction between two essentially separate systems, Tomkinsoffers an account of their many, mutual and asymmetrical interimplications.Between cognition and affect he conceives,

a set of relations of partial independence, partial dependence, and partialinterdependence that vary in their interrelationships. . . . Because of

thehigh degree of interpenetration and interconectedness of each part withevery other part and with the whole, the distinction we have drawnbetween the cognitive half and the motivational half must be considered tobe a fragile distinction. (Tomkins, 1992, p. 7)

These interimplications operate at every level of every system. For example,Tomkins explains that while the motivational system is concerned withamplification (of the drives by the affects) and the cognitive system is concernedwith transformation (of information) these operations are not meaningfullydisassociable from one another. The syntax of Tomkins` account performs theinterimplication being described:

The amplified information of the motivational system can be and must betransformed by the cognitive system, and the transformed information ofthe cognitive system can be and must be amplified by the motivationalsystem. Amplification without transformation would be blind;transformation without amplification would be weak. The blind mechanismsmust be given sight; the weak mechanisms must be given strength. Allinformation is at once biased and informed. (Tomkins, 1992, p. 7)

Any account of a cognitive system intimately amalgamated with a motivational-affective system isunusual

is hisability to structure that amalgamation in such a way that our usual critical mapsare rendered obsolete. All the conventional analytic devices-

the reduction ofaffect to cognition, the reduction of cognition to affect, the confinement ofcognition and affect to biology, the confinement of cognition and affect to culture,the expulsion of affect from cognitive theory, the expulsion

of cognition fromaffect theory, the defense of an autonomous cognitive domain, the defense of anautonomous affective domain, the admission of interactive moments betweenaffect and cognition, the refusal of interactive moments between cognition andaffect-

all these are passed over by Tomkins as he puts cognition into acoassembling alliance

with the affect-drive system. Let me gesture towards twoways in which Tomkins` model of coassembly manages to reroute bothconventional and critical approaches tothe nature of cognition.

First, Tomkins` coassembling schema is unequivocally a critique of interactionism(in both its mainstream and critical guises). Coassembly is not simply a connectingrelation-

it is not the coming together of divergent and discrete elements into asymmetrical and integrated whole (cognition + affect = behaviour). The notion ofcoassembly demands a less additive and a more constitutive understanding of therelation between the cognitive and affective systems. Tomkins suggests that

cognitions assemble affects as affects assemble cognitions. While mutual, theseassemblings are not symmetrical in the sense that cognition is the opposite ofaffect, that cognitive transformations are at the expense of affectiveamplifications, or that these various transformations and amplifications areconsonant. Coassembly is not the simple spatial and temporal structuration of onesystem interacting with, or supplementing, another. This is a configuration ofontological liability; a mutual and constitutive alliance within which cognitions andaffects are neither definitively integrated nor definitively autonomous. This relationof `partial independence, partial dependence, and partial interdependence` is arich schema of cognitive differentiation, asymmetry and generativity. The criticalconcern that some cognitions (cold ones) are privileged over others (hot ones),and that this is best redressed through an enforced interactionism, is dislodged byTomkins` notion that every cognition is already constitutively partial to thetrajectories of affects and drives. If we can envisage a system within whichcognitions become urgent and affects smart-

where these becomings are notsecondary, reducible or dissociated but rather originary, generative anddifferentiating-

then we have begun to grasp the ontological dynamics andstructuration of Tomkins` coassembling systems. This intimate intermingling isinstantiated in Tomkins` name for the system that integrates affect and cognition.He calls this theminding

system: `Minding stresses at once both its cognitiveprocess mentality and its caring characteristics. The human being then is aminding system composed of cognitive and affective subsystems. The humanbeing innately `minds` or cares about what he knows` (Tomkins, 1992, p. 10).

Second, the cool, sober foundations of conventional information processing arerealigned by Tomkins, but without jettisoning the notion of information processingper se from his definition of cognition (indeed, the transformation of

informationElizabeth A. Wilson

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remains the central function of Tomkins` cognitive system). For example, if thecognitive system is fused with the affect-drive system, then helplessness,confusion and error will be fundamental to cognitive maturity-

`the amplifiedinformation of the motivational system can be and must be transformed by thecognitive system.` Helplessness, confusion and error are not states that befall thecognitive system, but which it later comes to master (through, say, repression orbehavioural shaping).Helplessness, confusion and error are the enablingpossibilities of learning itself, without which cognition cannot exist or mature.Tomkins highlights the necessity of information processing being rooted in error ashe considers the design of humanlike automata (his concerns here accuratelypinpoint the difficulties that were to so powerfully limit future AI projects):

The [human automaton] would in all probability require a relatively helplessinfancy followed by a growing competence through its childhood andadolescence. In short it would require time in which to learn how to learnthrough making errors and correcting them. This much is quite clear and isone of the reasons for the limitations of our present automata. Theircreators are temperamentally unsuited to create and nurture mechanismswhich begin in helplessness, confusion and error. The automaton designeris an over protective, overdemanding parent who is too pleased withprecocity in his creations. As soon as he has been able to translate ahuman achievement into steel, tape and electricity, he is delighted with theperformance of his brain child. Such precocity essentially guarantees a lowceiling to thelearning

ability of his automaton, despite the magnitude ofinformation incorporated in its

design and performance.

A more patient designer would suffer through the painful steps which arerequired to nurture the learning capacities of the machine. It is necessarybecause information is not simply making correct responses. (Tomkins,1962, p. 116)

As Sedgwick and Frank note, Tomkins` system is useful not simply because itcoassembles cognition with affect, but because this fusion does not produce asymmetrical or neat fit: `It is the inefficiency of the fit between the affect systemand the cognitive system-

by error. By coassembling cognition and affect through error,Tomkins counters the prevailing conventional and critical prejudices that theprocessing of information is supposed to be an affectless, exact, faultlessoperation. In so doing Tomkins builds a more dynamic and powerful model ofcognitive processing. Tomkins theories of cognition were formulated (although notpublished) in the early years of cognitive theory. They do not draw on themorerecent developments in connectionist theory, or indeed on the early proto-connectionist models. It is worth noting here that contemporary connectionistmodels have integrated both error and feedback (back-propagation) as essentialElizabeth A. Wilson

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elements of a cognitive network. The extent to which these models respond to thekinds of challenges that Tomkins envisaged for an artificial cognitive system wouldrequire a more thorough analysis than can be undertaken here.

This is the most preliminary elucidation of the Tomkins system. These notes andsuggestions are offered here not as an introduction to Tomkins per se, but as away of demonstrating that cognitive theories and models can be usefully `critical`.What I mean by `critical` in this context perhaps requires

further explanation.There is a very specific reason why I have chosen to showcase Tomkins in thisdiscussion of the conceptual foundations of critical psychology when, in fact, thereare many other, better known contemporary critics of cognitivism and cognitivepsychology whose positions could be reviewed and discussed: Dreyfus, 1972,1992; Lakoff, 1987; Sampson, 1981; Searle, 1980; Varela, Thompson and Rosch,1991; Winogard and Flores, 1987. To put it simply, the majority of this criticalwork isagainst

cognitivism (or against some aspect thereof); for these criticsthere is something fundamentally flawed in cognitivism. Consequently, thesecritical projects are oriented in a similar way despite their substantialmethodological differences: they seek alternatives or corrections to cognitivism.For Tomkins, however, there is something fundamentally useful and generative incognitivism. It is Tomkins` ability to fashion a widereaching and de-conventionalising psychological theory out of basic cognitivist axioms such as thetransformation of information that marks his work as `critical` in a particular kindof way. It is critical because it puts many of psychology`s conventional tenetsabout drives, affects and cognition into question. It is critical becausedoes notconsider critical practice to be outside or beyond these conventional tenets. It iscritical because it doesn`t seek to liberate itself from psychology but todemonstrate the ways in which the containment of conventional psychology canbe advantageously deployed. Tomkins` theories disable the popular prejudice thatcritical psychology must find its foundations outside of cognitivism, that cognitivepsychology itself is critically dumb, and that in order for cognitive psychology tobecome usefully `critical` certain external, noncognitive orientations, perspectivesand theories will need to be injected into the cognitive domain. I have usedTomkins to argue that, contra these prejudices, cognitivism offers malleable,innovative and coherently `critical` ontologies. The task for the criticalpsychologist is not to render cognitivism critical, but to interpret the criticism thatcognitivism already delivers.

Critical foundations

These days the foundations of many critical and political projects in psychologyare taken to be necessarily `cultural`, `social`, `representational` or `discursive`in orientation. More often than not, these cultural, social, representational anddiscursive analyses are thought to be in opposition to computational explanations.There is much in Tomkins` theories to startle the anti-cognitivist ideals thatcompose the conventional foundations of these critical projects. Tomkins` relianceon conventional theories of information processing is likely to provoke charges ofreductionism and recidivism from a critically authorised audience. In a climateElizabeth A. Wilson

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where absolutely everything is undiscerningly subjected to the assertion `but it`ssocially constructed!` Tomkins` ongoing preference for computational explanationwill be difficult to

grasp.

Nonetheless, a measured consideration of thesecomputational tenets will reward any reader with a set of theories that have morevigour and more critical purchase than the now methodologically vague andanalytically exhausted motifs of `social constructionism`.

Critical psychology has directed much of its labour to challenging computationallyreductive accounts of psychological and behavioural tendencies. It is imperativehowever that such critical challenges are not transformed into simplistic rejectionsof computation or cognitivism per se. The critical difficulty with manycomputational theories in psychology is that they arereductively

computational-

they not only reduce the vicissitudes of psychology, they also reduce computationto narrow,

static and affectless parameters. An engaged response to such theoriesrequires not only an insistence on the richness of the psychological events theydescribe, but also an insistence on the generative nature of computation itself. Acritical psychologythat proceeds as though the parameters of computation areindeed limiting, inert and barren is more faithfully attuned to conventionalpsychology that it supposes itself to be.

If at this moment we are pausing to consider the conceptual foundations forcritical psychology, I would like to suggest that these foundations need not becemented in anti-cognitivism. Given the necessarily parasitic nature of any criticalendeavour, given that every critical psychology must attach itself to some aspectof mainstream psychology (be it an attachment to the therapeutic process,developmental schemata, psychodynamic processes, or the nature of learning), Iwould suggest that cognitivism is a no less worthy and no less useful site offoundational attachment. Given theinfluence of theories and methodologies of`social`, `cultural` or `discursive` analysis to many critical psychologies, themicrostructure of cognition is not easily recognised as a theatre of critical orpolitical action. However, perhaps this misrecognition is underwritten not by thenature of cognition, but by some of the foundational presumptions of these criticalpsychologies.